Will I Find him ?
Part 1: Circa 1997 - 1999
There were once two great friends. Aalekh and Pranoy Kapoor. They were the only two Kapoors in their class. The former was ok in academics while the latter was a ranker. Their friendship grew over the years but fate had it in store and unfortunately Pronoy had to shift to a petite town called Bhilai after the 9th standard. His dad got transferred.
They were not in touch for a year after that. Finally Aalekh sent him a card, a post card. An email would have been confused with a female in those days. That was in the 11th .He was too lazy and also incompetent at that time to write a letter. So, the card had a picture of a train on it and it read
Dear Pranoy
You were always on the Right track, but never on the Write track
Love Aalekh
The reply he got from Pronoy was a 3 page one with a snap attached. It said that he had lost his (Aalekh’s) address and was now staying in a hostel so couldn’t get in touch with him. It also read that Pranoy had taken Commerce, which was quite startling as he was the nerdy kinds. The letter mentioned keep in touch and reply soon in the end!! But the dickhead that Aalekh was, he never replied.
Part 2 – Present day
8 years down the line, I have still not heard from him. But I always harbored the hope that someday in my life, I would meet him again. So, began the search for Pronoy Kapoor 6 months ago. I didn’t know where to search, whom to ask, what to do. Everyone I knew didn’t have the faintest idea of where he was, the only option left was to search for his name on the net but unfortunately that also never yielded any results……… Until now!!
I remembered that he studied in DPS Bhilai after leaving Ahmedabad, so I searched and found the DPS Alumni website for all the DPS’s around India. And there it was. Found his name in the 2000 XII C Commerce Batch and apparently all this while I had been searching for the wrong name. It is Pranoy and not Pronoy.
So began the re-search and this time I was luckier. Searching for the right name took me to a photo diary which he had uploaded in May 2005, but again neither his email address nor his contact details were mentioned there. Annoying!! I know what he looks like now, but still can’t get in touch with him. Even my comments on his snaps can’t reach him, as he has not switched it on.
But the folks from the help desk at Fotopic are surprisingly very helpful. Since they cannot give me his email they offered to mail him on my behalf ( and give him my contact details. This happened yesterday. Still eagerly waiting for their confirmation mail and hoping for the best. I hope this works out. Where the fuck are you Pranoy!!!
Random things I have done in my desperate search for him.
And other random stuff which I can’t recall now. Nothing worked out. Hoping that the fotopic idea works out.....
There were once two great friends. Aalekh and Pranoy Kapoor. They were the only two Kapoors in their class. The former was ok in academics while the latter was a ranker. Their friendship grew over the years but fate had it in store and unfortunately Pronoy had to shift to a petite town called Bhilai after the 9th standard. His dad got transferred.
They were not in touch for a year after that. Finally Aalekh sent him a card, a post card. An email would have been confused with a female in those days. That was in the 11th .He was too lazy and also incompetent at that time to write a letter. So, the card had a picture of a train on it and it read
Dear Pranoy
You were always on the Right track, but never on the Write track
Love Aalekh
The reply he got from Pronoy was a 3 page one with a snap attached. It said that he had lost his (Aalekh’s) address and was now staying in a hostel so couldn’t get in touch with him. It also read that Pranoy had taken Commerce, which was quite startling as he was the nerdy kinds. The letter mentioned keep in touch and reply soon in the end!! But the dickhead that Aalekh was, he never replied.
Part 2 – Present day
8 years down the line, I have still not heard from him. But I always harbored the hope that someday in my life, I would meet him again. So, began the search for Pronoy Kapoor 6 months ago. I didn’t know where to search, whom to ask, what to do. Everyone I knew didn’t have the faintest idea of where he was, the only option left was to search for his name on the net but unfortunately that also never yielded any results……… Until now!!
I remembered that he studied in DPS Bhilai after leaving Ahmedabad, so I searched and found the DPS Alumni website for all the DPS’s around India. And there it was. Found his name in the 2000 XII C Commerce Batch and apparently all this while I had been searching for the wrong name. It is Pranoy and not Pronoy.
So began the re-search and this time I was luckier. Searching for the right name took me to a photo diary which he had uploaded in May 2005, but again neither his email address nor his contact details were mentioned there. Annoying!! I know what he looks like now, but still can’t get in touch with him. Even my comments on his snaps can’t reach him, as he has not switched it on.
But the folks from the help desk at Fotopic are surprisingly very helpful. Since they cannot give me his email they offered to mail him on my behalf ( and give him my contact details. This happened yesterday. Still eagerly waiting for their confirmation mail and hoping for the best. I hope this works out. Where the fuck are you Pranoy!!!
Random things I have done in my desperate search for him.
- Asked my very old tuition sir to give me the number of a guy who he used to teach, as this guy was Pranoy’s friend at that time.
- Searched for “Best orthodontist in Ahmedabad” as this guy once told me that his dad is the “best orthodontist in Ahmedabad”
- Devoured the Limca book of records. Pranoys grandmother at that time had the record of the longest letter written in India.
- Since I dint remember her name, I asked Pierre to search for a lady with the surname “Kapoor” with the record of the longest letter. Fortunately at that time he had a brief stint for a month with the Limca Book of Records.
- Mailed random people like pranoy@hotmail.com, pranoykapoor@hotmail.com, pranoy.kapoor@yahoo.com and many other combinations of his name and the email service, in the hope that one of them would be him
- Mailed all the people from his batch on the DPS alumni website asking if they were still in touch with him.
- Searched for his dads, moms, brothers name on google.
- Searched for the shipping company where his dad was working. He might be still working there!!
- Created accounts and searched all the freaking websites like friendester, hi5, sms, etc….
And other random stuff which I can’t recall now. Nothing worked out. Hoping that the fotopic idea works out.....
posted by Aalekh at 8:22 AM
6 Comments:
Looks like quite a good buddy of yours!
And thanks for the nice little mention - you forget that I replied to your email every time saying "Dude: the longest letter on record in India was written by a guy to the Pope."
:P
Hey, check on batchmates.com / namedatabase.com, if you're as lucky with guys as your are with girls, you might get something there but then again, you might already have looked at that.
Pranoy is lucky to have a friend like you :)
holy crap aalekh....i hope i never lose track of u- someday ull be quitting ur job looking like a maniac for me as well:)
arre 'bahut bahut, bahut bahut kaam hai'
He He... good that you found him..
Hey Allu,
So you finally managed to find our good old friend Pranoy. (For the spelling of his name, you should have asked me :-)). I am not really surprised though. Knowing you, i am sure you were enjoying the search. I think you should start a detective agency soon ;-)
Cheers,
Rishi
Post a Comment
<< Home